First of all, I'm sorry about your decision about law school. I hope it had nothing to do with our encounter.
Thank you for your question.
I think at times they can be quite consistent—that is, that protecting a competitor from certain practices helps promote competition. The danger, though, is that you start protecting competitors from what is in fact vigorous competition. I should be clear that this line is not always super easy to draw. There's contestation over a practice that some people argue is competition on the merits and other people argue is just a way to exclude or prey on a competitor. I'm not saying the line is easily drawn, but I think the concepts are actually reasonably clear.
Competition on the merits—a better product, a lower price—can be really hard on a competitor. If your product isn't as good or if your costs are higher and you have to charge a higher price, then that better product and those lower prices are bad for you. This is what I mean by saying that competition law is not concerned about the competitor, per se. That is, if that competitor is just not able to compete on price or quality, that's not the kind of competitor that's going to thrive in this market. That is actually just a manifestation of competition. Competition can be quite harmful to competitors. That's the whole idea. They're all trying to outdo one another, so that can cause harm to one another.
That's the distinction. Competition policy is trying to protect the competitive process. It's trying to protect competition. That will, in some circumstances, limit certain practices that harm competitors, but it will allow and indeed promote and encourage other kinds of practices that may harm competitors but are vigorous competition on the merits.